Pandemonium

cold weather, but the Rock Island was going into its third bankruptcy and the company was running everything they could. The stranger and the two other members of the crew—the train ran with just a conductor, engineer, and one brakeman—were nowhere to be seen. The conductor hopped down and hustled around the front of the train to the other side. It was twenty below, but he’d already started to sweat. About ten cars down, the engineer and brakeman crouched beside a boxcar, waving a flashlight at its underbelly. The stranger was halfway to them, striding through the snow beside the tracks.

“What’s the problem, boys?” the stranger called out heartily. “Outta air?”

The engineer looked up, surprised, then stood up. “Who the hell are you?” he said, his voice carrying easily in the cold air. The conductor frantically waved his arms as he ran, trying to get the engineer to shut up. The stranger didn’t seem to take offense. “Why, I’m the king of the rails, that’s who! I’ve got coal in my teeth and steam in my lungs! There’s never been an engine I couldn’t fix or a locomotive I couldn’t drive. No grade too steep, no snow too deep. I’m Smokestack Johnny, and I ride the high iron!”

A moment of stunned silence, and then the brakeman said, “Who?”

The engineer said nothing. He’d been a railroad man for fifteen years, but the brakeman was a kid only a month into the job. The conductor finally caught up to them. He was breathing hard and he felt sick to his stomach, but he forced a shaky smile onto his face. “What can we do for you, Johnny?”

The stranger whipped around. “Hey there!” he said, beaming. “You must be the conductor.” He was a handsome man, his jaw as square and clean shaven as a Burma-Shave ad, his hair as black as axle grease. “Say, we rode together once, didn’t we?”

The conductor gulped, nodded. “Back in forty-eight. You took us through Chicago.” He still got the nightmares.

“Right!” Johnny said, then laughed his big laugh. “Course, not everybody on that crew was all that polite.” He winked at the other two men. “A few of those boys had to be dropped off a little early, if you know what I mean. But we made it across the ol’ Mississip, didn’t we? Record time!”

The conductor tried to laugh with him. “Yessir, record time.”

“Right! Now let’s see about getting this iron horse moving.”

Johnny marched off toward the end of the train. The engineer looked at the conductor with fear in his eyes. He must have seen the pictures from the last time Johnny had ridden the Rock Island line, two years before: a hundred derailed cars flung over the bridge and onto a Missouri highway. The new kid, though, still didn’t seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation.

“Why don’t you go up to the head end and keep the engine ready,” the conductor told the engineer, loudly enough for Johnny to hear. The engineer knew who to talk to at dispatch.

The engineer glanced back at Johnny. “You sure?”

“Just go.”

The conductor and the brakeman jogged to catch up with the demon. Every few cars Johnny ducked under, took a quick look around, and sometimes rapped the air brake pipes with his knuckles. At the thirtieth car, a piggyback flatbed with a truck trailer latched onto it, he said, “I think I see your problem.”

All three of them squatted down under the car. It was still cold, but they were out of the wind.

Johnny stuck his finger into an ice-encrusted ventilator. “Your A-1’s frozen open. Musta popped when you dumped your air at the yard.” He turned to the young brakeman. “I need a pipe wrench, son, and a coupla fusees.”

The brakeman looked at the conductor, and the conductor nodded. A few minutes later the kid came back lugging a tool chest as big as a suitcase, and a smaller red plastic case. The stranger popped open the plastic case and took out a long red fusee.

“Watch your eyes,” he said, and broke off the butt of the flare. The end sparked, and began to hiss red flame and white smoke. He held it like a magic wand, playing the fire over the frozen valve, and started to sing:

“Johnny told the brakeman, get your hand off that wheel, Johnny told the brakeman, get your hand off that wheel, We’re going through Altoona